These folks are not naïve, foolish or brainless they’re unlucky. Once I understood that truth, imagining the mind of a cult member was not so difficult. Over and over, my research confirmed this humble but powerful truth: people who join cults are hoping for something more out of life. When she arrives at Wisewood, she looks around the island and realizes what she has in common with her fellow guests-hope. Kit is completely disenchanted with and disengaged from “real life” she wants to do something dramatic to shake up her routine. They take part because they’re searching for something: belonging, purpose, a higher power.įor these very reasons, one of my three protagonists in This Might Hurt, Kit Collins, joins Wisewood, a fictional self-improvement community on a private island off the coast of Maine. They sign up for churches and political groups and social clubs. As Deborah Layton points out in her memoir, Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple, people don’t join cults. True crime docs often neglect to depict the beginning stages, when the organization is functional and a force of good in the world. I couldn’t picture myself or anyone I knew falling victim to one of these communities, but that was only because art has tended to gloss over the psychology of cults. No matter how many documentaries I watched or novels I read, I kept coming back to the same simple question: why? Like most people, I was primarily engrossed by the bizarre customs, rules, and clothing. When I set out to write This Might Hurt, I wanted to answer two questions: why do people join cults, and why do people start them? Before I did my research and began writing, I knew very little about the psychology of cults. In my second novel, This Might Hurt, it involved diving deep into a cult and understanding not only what a cult leader is thinking but also the members. In my first book, The Recovery of Rose Gold, that meant inhabiting the brain space of a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy it required playing the role of a narcissist and manipulator. If I can’t fathom what goes through a certain person’s head, that person is probably a choice candidate to narrate my novels. Keep your protagonist with her heart of gold-I don’t want my main character to make one big mistake I want her to be a perpetual screw-up.Īs a writer, these are the characters that light me up.

I find society’s outliers much more fascinating than everyday people like you and me. I want the author to prove me wrong, to make me empathize with schemers, cheaters, and liars. As a reader, I like to roam around the minds of people I’m sure I’ll never understand.

This might hurt novel